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Monday, April 6, 2015

Master Keaton Case 1: Man in a Maze

Case 1: Man in a Maze

I want to make a special note, I will be doing any and all
anime reviews whilst watching their English language dubs. If no dubs are available I will of course use
their subtitled versions but this will be a very rare occurrence. If you don’t like that factor well…I’m sorry
but I was born and raised in the United States of America and while
I like watching subs I actually only speak my native English language. I just generally get more enjoyment out of
dubs (usually) than subtitled versions of anime or films. That’s not to say the dubbed versions are
superior but as a native English speaker I listen/watch and enjoy those more
than versions where I’m constantly staring at a 1 inch frame of space to read
subtitles whilst missing the nuances of character reactions or beauty of
backdrops and character interactions.

That said I won’t comment on performances all that much as
that can be a very touchy subject for most fans. Subbies and Dubbies still exist, they’re still
animalistic with each other, and I don’t want that shit coming in and ruining
reviews or even just genial discussions any of you may want to have in the
comments below. If you like or dislike a
performance that’s fine. If you despise an actor that’s fine, but don’t
hound about it in the comments.

In terms of the dub of Master Keaton I have watched the
original Japanese version a handful of times but I much prefer and enjoy the
dub version produced by Ocean Group.Why? Well it’s an odd thing but
in Japanese the actors only do one thing:speak Japanese. There are no real
attempts at any sort of accentual changes or ways of really speaking. In the English version we are able to have the
actors speak one concrete language but have the actors use accents varying by
character and the region in which the stories take place/characters are from. While many praise the anime’s dub as one of
the better dubs Ocean Group produced they also comment about the accents used
in the show. Most think a majority of
the accents are over exaggerated. I’d
say for me there are one or two characters where this is the case but most of
the actors make their accents more realistic which fits with the show. Now, off of my soap box and onto the review!!!

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
SPOILERS

We open with a shot of a man lying at the base of a bluff. Said man is identified as Leon Papas, and we
see from an insurance report that the cause of death is listed as “bruised and
bleeding from a fall.” We then
transition to a history lesson about ancient Greece
and Morocco
and how sports like wrestling ended up being the origins of gambling. “[Gambling] has since branched out into
recreation and business. The business of
betting on whether a policy holder survives within a certain time frame…the
origin of life insurance.”

We see here an example of how Keaton, as a teacher, tends to
mix various parts of his skills and knowledge into his explanations. He actually makes his lessons fascinating to
listen to while also being incredibly educational. It’s a skill Keaton excels at, speaking in
laymen’s terms but sharing a vast wealth of knowledge. We see this skill of easy explanation
displayed time and again by Keaton in various situations and to various people.
Keaton is incredibly bright and
intelligent but doesn’t flaunt said intelligence in people’s faces like some
professors (that I’ve know personally) would.

Keaton’s class ends as he tells his students that he won’t
be seeing them next week. A few of the
students talk amongst themselves about this, saying he’s been skipping classes
lately and that it’s highly likely he’ll be fired because of it. While Keaton is in the staff room he picks up
his last paycheck, the clerk asks if Keaton has moved again as another paycheck
has been returned. This is something I
never quite got whilst watching the series or reading the two volumes of the
manga that are currently out via Viz’s prints. This same remark, that Keaton has moved again,
is stated in the manga too but we never really go anywhere with it. It’s true that the series is an episodic one
and other than a small handful of recurring characters each episode has unique
characters in different settings. But
regardless of Keaton’s travels we never really see evidence of his moving
(except for in Case 5: Paris Under the
Roof, where Keaton has been fired from a college in Tokyo
and takes a job as an instructor at an adult education center in France).
Even then however no clear evidence of
his moving is readily shown, his apartment isn’t filled with boxes and his
daughter doesn’t seem too surprised when she visits him (even though he’s in
FRANCE NOT JAPAN).

Anyway back to the episode Keaton writes down his new
address and steals the clerk’s tape without him knowing. Keaton is also told that he’s received a call
from Lloyds Insurance, a company Keaton works for as we soon discover, and we
learn a little bit about the company as the two clerks discuss it (and that
their tape is missing again…apparently Keaton’s got slight kleptomaniac tendencies).
Lloyds is an Insurance Consortium where
individual syndicates pool their resources together to provide multifaceted
policies for people, usually those who are well off. In an intriguing twist Lloyds is actually a
real insurance market with a long history. Keaton, as we’ll have mentioned in later
episodes, works specifically for Lloyds of London, which is the birthplace and main
office of Lloyds services. (If you’re
interested, the wiki article is actually well referencedhere
)

As Keaton travels to Greece
we learn that Leon Pappas, the deceased, was a mercenary from Greece who,
until recently was living a quiet life pulling up artifacts from sunken ships
off the coast of his hometown. Said
hometown is now mostly abandoned and Pappas was hoping to find rare artifacts
to both spread history and to raise money to keep his town as a cultural
landmark itself. Pappas has a
girlfriend, a young woman from the village named Sofia; however strangely enough Pappas left
neither of them any money from his insurance, instead it all went to Ox Art
Company. Keaton is given a photo of Ox
Art Company’s President Ox Bayer. Keaton
immediately recognizes the man, even knowing his name and states that he “sort
of” knows the man. Keaton’s partner,
Daniel O’Connell provides him with a ticket to Greece and asks Keaton to
investigate why Ox has been named the beneficiary and to discover the true
reason behind Pappas’ death.

IsidorasVillage is over 2000
years old, and is struck by frequent heavy winds. The winds are so strong in fact that they’ve
managed to wear down the carefully cut stones used to make the winding streets
and archways of the town. Keaton’s taxi
driver states that the village is practically abandoned and that the tourists
won’t visit until the Summer. Keaton
simply marvels at a still standing 2000 year old village, even if it has no
electricity. Knowing Keaton that’s
probably one of the things he absolutely loves about the place.

We learn that Sofia
doesn’t really like to talk to people, and we see the woman in question being
pestered by Ox Bayer and some cronies. Before they can make good on any threats
Keaton glides in with the natural charm and bumbling nature that we learn is
actually quite genuine but that helps others completely underestimate him or think
him weak and simple minded. A simple
thing like a crumpled paycheck (Keaton’s pay he was unimpressed with from the
college at the beginning of the episode) allows him to step between Bayer’s men
and Sofia without causing a big scene. As Keaton passes by and comments on the wind
Bayer remarks that something about Keaton strikes him as familiar and that the
two may have met before.

Sofia
initially ignores Keaton and puts on her diving gear while he tries to question
her.Keaton’s patience pays off however
as Sofia leads
him to the house she and Pappas used to share and Keaton marvels at the ancient
city around them.He notices a keystone
in an archway is quite loose…hmm…that might come in handy later.The city is built like a giant maze (hence
the name of our episode) and we hear that a large number of Greek ships used to
sail by the village in ancient times.Keaton asks Sofia
relates that she has always considered the man her hero ever since she was a
little girl.Pappas was the strongest
man in the village and held the ideas of truth and justice close to his
heart.Bayer and his men meanwhile have
been outside of the house keeping an eye on Sofia and Keaton as they discuss
Pappas’ past.Bayer has heard that
Lloyds of London has sent an agent to investigate Pappas’ death and Bayer will
use any means necessary to prevent Keaton from completing his investigation and
leaving the island.

Sofia
recalls that when Pappas joined the National Liberation Front he came back a
changed man.Whilst he had a good head
on his shoulders and romanticized ideals he also held a soft spot for places
full of history.The war, Sofia laments, didn’t
just wound his body but his heart too and the man who returned from war was not
the same man whom had left for it.Keaton surmises that Pappas probably started collecting relics of
ancient times to try and repair his wounded soul.Shortly after Pappas’ excavations began Bayer
and his men appeared.Any and all
artifacts Pappas brought up from the ocean floor were willingly handed over to
Bayer and his men.

Keaton asks if they were extorting Pappas and reveals an
awful lot of Bayer’s back story.Bayer became
a Sergeant Major in the British Special Air Force but was discharged and then
fought in Africa as a mercenary where he met
Pappas.While they were in Africa their squad was attacked and Pappas was tasked
with blowing up a temple to kill the men attacking them.However Pappas couldn’t do it and many of his
friends died during the fight.Pappas
blamed himself for the men’s deaths and Bayer used his guilt to extort the
treasures from Pappas and raise a small fortune for himself. However there was one treasure Pappas refused
to give Bayer.

Before Keaton can discover what this treasure is he notices
Bayer and his men approaching the house.They are armed with pistols, a point he explains to Sofia by explaining how their suit jackets
are buttons and arms are away from their sides because of their shoulder holsters.Keaton hastily looks around the house for
some form of protection from the armed men and spies a wooden spoon which he
grabs before he and Sofia run out the back door. As Keaton leads the men through the maze of
city streets he whittles away at their numbers by removing the loose keystone
he noticed earlier.Keaton then takes
the tape he’d borrowed earlier and breaks the wood spoon while Sofia asks what he’s planning to do.A rock suddenly comes flying towards one of
Bayer’s men, hitting him straight between the eyes and knocking him out
cold.Bayer suddenly remembers Keaton’s
identity from the look on his face and we discover that Keaton is no seemingly
ordinary and clumsy man.Keaton was in
fact a Survival Instructor in the SAS and was referred to as “Master.”(An interesting tidbit, this title will come
up much later in the anime so try to
keep the title in mind.)Keaton quickly
dispatches Bayer and lectures him on the faultiness of firearms in locations
with high wind values and how simpler, more primitive weapons can in fact be
much more deadly and accurate.

Sofia takes Keaton to a
hidden cave and he finally sees the treasure Pappas fought so hard to keep out
of Bayer’s hands:a collection of long
lost coins from IthicaIsland.Bayer apparently kept hounding Pappas about
the coins and threatened the man with revealing his military failures unless he
and his company were named the beneficiaries in the incidence of Pappas
untimely death.However Bayer’s greed
got the better of him and when he had finally had enough he pushed Pappas off a
cliff, killing the man in an area that could be deemed treacherous enough to
make the fall look like an accident so that they could still get the money from
his demise.Keaton reminds Sofia about the legend of
Ulysses and the hardships he endured something which directly paralleled to
Pappas’ own past.Sofia insists that Keaton take a coin for his
help and her own appreciation.The
episode ends with Keaton agreeing to take a single coin and telling the taxi
driver from before that it was “just as [you] said” and that there was nothing
to see in the village.

Case 1 of Keaton does a good job of setting up the world in
which we find ourselves in.There are no
super powers or large eyes here, the world we are shown is in fact our own set
sometime in the early 90s (timelines in the manga are never strictly presented
so one has to infer by storylines, history given for the world and comments by
things Keaton has participated in).Keaton remains one of my favorite anime protagonists of all time.What we get here are the basic building
blocks of his character.Keaton is a
lecturer of history.He knows a lot
about history and especially about artifacts and ruins.He is also incredibly intelligent and mild
mannered.Keaton is the kind of man that
blends into the crowd rather than sticks out from it.He slouches his shoulders, he ducks his head,
he’s sometimes absent minded and has some kleptomaniac tendencies, he trips
over curbs and acts innocent but behind all these appearances is a mind more
akin to Sherlock Holmes than a buffoon.

However Keaton isn’t only a lecturer he’s also an
ex-military man in the SAS.For those
unaware the SAS is the Special Air Service, a British Special Forces unit (it’s
now a corps as of 1950) which serves as a model for special services around the
world.The unit does everything from
covert reconnaissance, to counter-terrorism, to direct action and humanitarian
intelligence gathering.While we don’t
get much background on it in this episode (we get more on it in later Cases) we
can tell by Bayer’s flashback that its training is incredibly challenging and
for Keaton to be the Master of said training means he’s more than well versed
in survival techniques and methods, and has highly trained senses and a unique
set of skills.In other words Keaton
knows how to blend in; he doesn’t announce his presence which makes it easy for
people to constantly underestimate him.But Keaton isn’t full of himself, he knows his skills and his
limitations but he also has a keen mind and is able to find the weaknesses of
his enemies.While this episode might
not have the best story it does a good job of setting up Keaton as a character
whilst giving us a small glimpse at his past and his capabilities and
interests.

What further adventures await Keaton? What more will we find out about his past and his skills? Tune in for Case 2!